It is well known, as typified by U.S. Pat. No. 4,112,174, to manufacture fibrous mats by forming an aqueous slurry including, e.g., glass fibers, in a plurality of tanks in which the fibers are intensely agitated in order to disperse the fibers. After this dispersing operation, the fiber containing slurry is applied to a moving screen where a vacuum may remove a majority of the water resulting in a fibrous mat or a web. After formation of the web, a binder substance may be applied to assist in an interbonding of the fibers. Thereafter, the bonded web is passed through a dryer for evaporating any water remaining in the web and for curing the binder.
Conventionally, in the above process, termed the "wet-mat" process, the glass fibers or fibrous material are fed or dispensed into the fiber dispersing tanks by a feeder comprising a pivotable bulk container which dumps the fibrous material onto a forward feed conveyor. A plurality of spike rolls agitate the material as it is conveyed by the forward feed conveyor to a pair of lift aprons. The lift aprons, along with a lower feed conveyor, define a fiber holding chamber so that upon command fibers can be transported to an incline conveyor and a fiber weighing scale. Subsequently, the fibers are allowed to fall by gravity from the scale into the fiber dispersing tanks.
The lift aprons of the above feeder comprise a tined, slatted belt trained about a driving and a driven pulley. During the operation of the feeder, fibers, i.e., waste fibers, are trapped and accumulated between the belt and the driven pulley resulting in an undesirable pattern of belt breakage and machine down time. As a result, maintenance costs are uneconomically high and the entire process continuity and dependability suffers.